creamed-coconut.org

The last month or so has gone well.  I am still enjoying my job – I have created 7 sites so far, but none of them have gone live yet.  Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before that happens.  Last week I had a catch-up meeting with my manager and he said that he’s very pleased with my progress so far, and that he’s received positive feedback from my colleagues.  We also discussed what I would be doing once I’d finished building all these new websites (which should be sometime in July) – he said that I would be involved in making further improvements to the site and adding extra functionality, such as geo-tagging and improving the event search pages.

Towards the end of April, I had a meal at Mambo Jambo’s with the IVC social club, which I enjoyed.  I also got myself a new hair cut (which I prefer to my old one) and some new clothes for the spring and summer.  We revisted Burlingham Woods for another walk, but almost all the daffodils had died out and the bluebells weren’t yet out.  There were a few primroses though.  We plan to go back again sometime to see the bluebells.

Last weekend was a bank holiday weekend, and on the Saturday night I went clubbing with my friend Kay and her work colleague Rachel.  I met Kay out of work and we walked round Rachel’s house to get ready.  We then had a meal at Artorio’s restaurant on Riverside, which was really nice.  I had meatballs and spaghetti.  Then we went on to Lloyd’s and Chicago Rock Cafe.

On Thursday it was Terry’s birthday, so on Friday evening after work we all went out for meal at Malaysian Delights.  I had so much rice and noodles that I felt too full up to have a dessert, which is unlike me!  It was a nice evening though.

Yesterday morning I went to watch my niece Emily play football for her Norwich City girls’ team.  They were playing against Gorleston Rangers, and the match was held at the recreation ground just down the road.  It was freezing cold (ridiculously cold considering it’s May!) so I had to wrap up warm with my winter clothes!  It was also very grey and drizzly.  During the main part of the match, no one scored so it had to go to extra time.  In the end, Emily’s team lost but everyone thought that they played very well.  I had to warm up in front of the fire when I arrived back home!

All in all, I’m still very happy and 2010 is turning out to be a much better year than the dastardly 2009!

It’s taken me a while to get round to updating my blog, and I’ve already mentioned this on my Twitter and Facebook updates, but I’ve found a new job! And I’ve fulfilled my dream of becoming a full-time web developer!

It was Monday night 3 weeks ago that I received a call from the interviewer, to say that I’d got the job. I was delighted, especially as it was a challenging recruitment process – in total there were 3 rounds of interviews and I also completed a programming test. The first interview was fairly generic, whereas the second interview focused on my ideas for the company’s website. The third interview was shorter – the interviewers asked me to talk them through my online portfolio, to explain how I built each of the websites I’d developed. At the end of the third interview, they set me the programming test. I was asked to do the test in my own time – it consisted of 7 pages of programming code in the Velocity content management system, and my task was to identify the error which was causing an image to appear in the wrong position on the website. I determined that the problem was due to an error in a loop. I emailed the answer to the interviewers and it was just a couple of days later that I received the phone call offering me the job.

I was so happy that I called all family and friends to tell them about my new job. They were all pleased for me. That night, I slept better than I had done for ages – I felt so happy that I had fulfilled one of my dreams, that I would no longer have to worry about searching for jobs, and that I would be working for a company which is (hopefully) more stable, so I won’t have to go through restructures every couple of years. Hopefully I will be more settled and happier in this new job.

I then faced a nerve-wracking wait for my offer letter and my contract to arrive through the post. Once I received my offer letter, I handed in my leaving letter to my existing employer. I say “leaving letter” because I’m not actually resigning, I’m just taking my redundancy a couple of months earlier than my agreed redundancy date. My manager was happy for me, although he was sad that I would be leaving. I sent out an email to all the people with whom I’ve worked over the last 4 and a half years, to let them know I’d be leaving the company. My manager and my co-workers wished me well in my new career. I received lots of nice emails, even from people I hadn’t worked with for over 3 years. It’s good to know they still remember me and that they still care. I plan to arrange a leaving party for my co-workers on the Friday after I leave the company.

As I was required to give 4 weeks’ notice, I won’t be leaving my current job until Wednesday 17th February, and then I will start my new job on the following Monday.

In the new job, I will be working for a local newspaper publisher, developing and maintaining their websites. My late grandfather (on my mother’s side of the family) used to work for that company, working on the printing presses, so it is good that I am following in his footsteps. I’ve always been interested in newspapers, and I never imagined I’d end up working for a newspaper publisher.

I will be having a celebration meal at Zaks with my family on Friday evening, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve also had more copies of my blog book printed (covering January 2005 to December 2009) and I will give these to my sisters on Friday evening, as they asked for copies of their own. These arrived today and I’m pleased with how they turned out.

This has been one of my favourite Christmas weeks for several years! There are several reasons for this: last year the whole family was ill so I couldn’t enjoy myself properly and this made me more determined to enjoy Christmas this year. It was also good to be able to chill out after all that’s been going on over the last few weeks.

On Christmas Day I stayed at home with Mum and Terry and we had our turkey meal at home. In the morning, my sisters came round to bring their presents.

My main present this year was a new MP3 player. I actually already knew this before Christmas Day, as I went to the shop to help choose which one I wanted. I had outgrown my old 1gb MP3 player, so I wanted one which would hold more songs. My new one is 32gb and can hold 16,000 songs as well as videos! It is a Creative Zen, just like my previous one. I’ve already transferred a lot of my old songs and CDs to my new MP3 player.

My other presents included several CDs and DVDs, a couple of books, new earrings, a new winter coat, a new umbrella, a coffee mug and some chocolate. One of my new DVDs was the film Ice Age 3, so we watched that in the afternoon after dinner. I never had a chance to see it at the cinema, but I thought it was a good film even though I slightly preferred the first 2 films.

Boxing Day was fun, too. We spent most of the day at my sister Suzanne’s house, where we had roast beef for dinner. For dessert, I had chocolate cheesecake that Suzanne’s husband Paul had made. After dinner, we played on the Nintendo Wii. My niece Emily had a Mario Kart game and a Wii Fit. I’d never played the Mario Kart game before and it was really funny because I kept crashing into things (especially towards the beginning, before I got used to it) and I came last in a lot of the races! The Wii Fit was funny too – I’ve played some of the games before round my friend Naomi’s house. The step aerobics game was the funniest, as I found it difficult to keep up with all the moves, especially towards the end when it got faster. Everyone in the room was laughing, and the time went really fast because I was enjoying myself so much! I’m now hoping to get a Wii for my birthday!

I am off work until the 4th of January, so tomorrow morning I will visit Wymondham with Terry and my niece Anya. We will go for a walk round the town, take some photos and visit the local cafe for a milkshake.

Thanks to everyone who has voted in the poll to help decide the name of my new website domain. At the time of writing, summer-bliss is in the lead, with 3 votes out of a total of 12. The other popular names are winter-dreams, raw-element and vanilla-dreams. However, in the last few days I have been a bit unsure about using the names with seasons in them – I’m planning to launch the new site in January and I just hope it won’t seem strange having a name with the word “summer” in it. Then again, the winter names would probably sound just as weird when it’s in the middle of summer-time. I do really like the name summer-bliss though. If I don’t pick that, I may end up going for raw-element, as that’s not specific to any particular time of the year. I’ll think about it some more over the next few days, and in the meantime I will start writing the content for the new site.

Last Sunday I went to PC World to buy some more ink cartridges for my printer, and while I was there I bought a Nintendo DS Lite hand-held games console. My friend Naomi got one of those for her birthday earlier this year and she has often been talking about how good it is (especially the brain-training games) so that’s why I decided to buy one myself. I bought the “More Brain Training” and “Maths Training” games to go with it. Unfortunately the store didn’t have the original Brain Training game, so that’s why I had to get the sequel instead, but it doesn’t matter what order you play them in anyway. I have been playing it every day so far (as recommended) and it definitely seems to be working, as my scores have been improving most days.

I decided to get the Maths Training game as I sometimes find it difficult to do mental arithmetic quickly (although I am fine at “written” maths, where you work everything out on paper). About 2 and a half years ago I applied for an internal job vacancy, and as part of the selection process I had to do a verbal reasoning test (English test) and a numerical reasoning test (mental arithmetic test) as well as attending an interview. I did well on the verbal reasoning test but my score on the numerical reasoning test was quite low because I couldn’t work out the answers quickly enough, and I think that’s one of the main reasons why I wasn’t offered that particular job. Thankfully I didn’t have to do a mental arithmetic test in order to get my current job. However, I wouldn’t want to miss out on any internal job opportunities/promotions in the future just because my maths is too slow, so that’s one of the reasons why I decided to get the Maths Training game to help me improve. Being able to do calculations more quickly will also help me in my current job.

On Friday night I went clubbing with my friend Kay again. It is good that we are getting back into the routine of going out more often, just like we did 3 or 4 years ago. Like last month, we met in the Glasshouse pub, although this time we went dancing at Mercy nightclub. We also met some people from our old high school. It was really good and overall I preferred it to the time we went out last month.

My new job is going well so far. Now that I’m more used to the software, I’m getting through the development work more quickly than I could last year. This new team that I’m part of may even become a permanent team in the future. I’m settling in OK. Last Wednesday I went out for an introductory lunch with the team, which was good.

A week ago I bought a DVD recorder. You may remember I mentioned in a previous post that my old DVD player had broken down. I decided that this time, I may as well buy one which can record as well as play discs. The good thing is that the one I bought has even got a hard disk drive built into it, and it’s also got the facililty to pause and rewind live TV!

Other than work-related stuff, I’ve had quite a quiet time recently. I’m already starting to think about what to do for my 24th birthday party in February. Sadly, it seems likely that only one or two of my friends will be able to make it this year. One of them is currently at university away from home (she is in her first year), so she probably won’t come back until Easter. She is about 150 miles away so it’s pretty certain she won’t be able to make it. I will probably end up asking my nieces to come along, as it would be boring to play ten pin bowling with only 2 or 3 people.

This month, my sister Sarah started a new internal job at Boots pharmacy – she now travels round different care homes, dispensing medication to the residents. At the moment, this job is only on a secondment basis, but she hopes it will become permanent soon (if not, she will return to her previous job as an accuracy checking technician).

Just like last year, I had a fairly quiet Christmas Day – I stayed at home with Mum and Terry for most of the day, where we had our turkey meal. However, after opening our own presents, we all went round my sister Suzanne’s house for about an hour to give out our presents.

My main present this year was an LCD TV for my bedroom. It has Freeview, which means there are about 40 digital channels and numerous radio stations and it is also HD ready. It’s one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever had. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to get until the actual morning; the plan was either a Nintendo Wii or an LCD TV, so I did have an idea it would be the TV, especially as Nintendo Wiis are in very short supply at the moment so I wasn’t surprised I didn’t get one of those. Anyway, Terry said I would be able to use a TV every day, whereas I probably wouldn’t use a Nintendo Wii quite so often.

My other presents included several CDs, a couple of DVD games (The X Factor and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire), a new nightdress and 2 DVD films – Charlotte’s Web and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I also got a couple of chocolate selection boxes and some toiletries.

We spent Boxing Day round Suzanne’s house, where we had a big buffet. We also played a few games, including my X Factor DVD game, which was fun. Sadly it doesn’t seem to work on my own DVD player, in fact I think my DVD player has stopped working completely, which is a shame as I’ve only had it for just over a year. I think we will have to make sure the heads are clean, and if that doesn’t fix it, I will have to buy a new one. If I buy a new one, I’ll probably choose one which can record as well as play DVDs.

Tomorrow will be the last day of 2007. It will soon be time for me to write my review of the year. I’m not sure what the plans will be for New Year’s Eve; for the last few years we have always had my nieces round to stay the night, as Suzanne usually goes out, but I’m not yet sure if that will happen again this year. Anyway, on New Year’s Day we will be having our annual “big feast” round our house for all the family. We couldn’t have one on New Year’s Day 2007, as a couple of relatives were working and couldn’t make it, so we held a big feast on Terry’s birthday in May instead. Fortunately, this year everyone can make it, so we’ll be able to have the big feast on New Year’s Day as usual.

So, summer has arrived at last! It was very late this year, and for the last couple of months there has been severe flooding in parts of Northern and South-western England. We weren’t affected by any of the flooding, although we did have lots of heavy rain and cold weather. At times it felt more like March than July!

Yesterday we went to the beach for the first time this year. We went to Cromer then on to Overstrand. It was a lovely day. We had lunch in the restaurant of a hotel in Cromer (incidently, it was the same restaurant where Mum and Terry went on their first date together 6 years ago!) Then we sat on the beach for a couple of hours or so.

On Saturday the 18th of August, our holiday in the Yorkshire Dales begins. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll be able to take nice photos of the local scenery.

This weekend I cooked some butterfly buns. I used vanilla essence for the buttercream, which tasted good.

At work I had my appraisal a couple of weeks ago. I received positive feedback from the people I work with. My manager said that I would soon be able to go on the 12-month consultant development plan, so I could well be a consultant by the time I’m 25. My CII course (which I mentioned in my previous entry) is still going well. I’ll have a study day this Friday, because I hope to get all the assignments for my current module completed before I go on holiday. Then when I come back from my holiday, I’ll be able to concentrate on revision. My first exam is being held in late September, although I haven’t been told the exact date yet.

I’ve recently started using Facebook. Several people at work use it, and it’s becoming more popular here than Myspace. If you want to see my profile, then click here:

This Monday just gone was a bank holiday (the last one we get until the end of August). As it was raining really heavily, and had been all weekend, Mum and I decided to go to the cinema. We’d planned to see The Bridge to Terabithia and go for a meal afterwards. But once we reached the ticket desk at the cinema, the lady behind the counter said that she’d sold the last 2 tickets just a few seconds earlier and that there wouldn’t be any more showings that day. This film has actually been out for several weeks, so I was surprised it was fully booked, but I suppose it happened because everyone wanted to go to the cinema because rain meant it would be no fun to do anything else. Also, the new Pirates of The Caribbean film had just been released, and because that was full, people had obviously decided to see The Bridge to Terabithia instead, making that full as well.

But there were no other films we wanted to see, so we just left it and had a meal at the Frankie & Benny’s restaurant, where I had a chicken burger and fries, and then we bought some DVDs and watched them at home.

At work I will soon be learning to use the Microsoft Reporting Services software (part of SQL Server). One of the objectives I have been set is to convert some of the databases from Microsoft Access to Reporting Services, so that the reports can be viewed over the company intranet. So in order to try and get a head start, I thought I’d try installing Reporting Services on my home computer last weekend. It was a nightmare. I went to the official Microsoft site and they had a free download of SQL Server 2000 – I know it’s 7 years old but I thought it would be fine for practising on. When I installed it, the dialog boxes said that it is recommended to have several other programs installed as well, including Visual Studio. I then remembered I had an old CD of Visual Studio 6.0 from when I was a student, which I had to use for my programming assignments. So I installed that, but then I found that it’s the wrong version and it’s not compatible with SQL Server. I don’t even understand how to start up SQL Server and start creating database queries with it, and the instructions seem to be aimed at professional network/server adminstrators rather than someone learning for the first time. In the end I gave up and decided I would just wait until it’s installed on the computers at work. At least there the installation would be done for me and they will (I hope!) teach me how to get started.

I’ve had a really busy time over the last couple of weeks. Last night I finally got round to creating a DVD of all my videos from 2006 and early 2007 – including videos of my holidays, days out and also me opening my presents on Christmas day! It’s the first time I’ve ever made a DVD on this computer and it took about 45 minutes in total.

A couple of Thursdays ago I went to the cinema with Mum to see Mr Bean’s Holiday. It was ever so funny and it’s my favourite film of the year so far. On the Saturday after that we went to the Malaysian Delights buffet restaurant – we go there every 3 weeks now because we like it so much. Last Friday I went out with one of the women from work – we had a meal at the local Frankie & Benny’s Restaurant and then went to a nightclub. I hadn’t been out dancing for months, so that was fun. This Sunday Mum, Terry and I went for a walk round the grounds at Felbrigg Hall, now that the weather is nice.

My new job is going well – tomorrow I will have been in the team for exactly a month. I’ve been given a lot more responsibility too; one of the men from the team has just gone on secondment to another department, so I have taken over his workload. In my old job, I was never given responsibility for running my own projects, so I’m pleased I have the chance to do so now.

For some reason, the evenings seem to be going a lot faster now than they used to. I don’t know why that is, because I still arrive home at the same time each day. It’s weird, especially since it doesn’t get dark as early as it used to, so I would’ve thought that the evenings would seem longer, not shorter.

Sorry for the prolonged downtime – my old webhosts closed down without warning, and it’s only now that I’ve managed to get everything transferred! On this new hosting plan, I have 250 times as much space for pretty much the same price!

A lot has happened in the 6 weeks or so since I last blogged. If you have read my site a lot over the past 10 months, you will have noticed that I mentioned the re-structure at work in several of my posts. It was a very long, drawn-out restructure. It finally came to an end in late February. And the outcome for my team was not good. We all expected there to be cuts, but no-one could have predicted how severe they would be. There were 9 people in the team, and 5 of them were at the same level as me or one level above me. We were all called into a meeting one morning to be told our fate. In the re-structure, the 5 were cut down to just 1. The other 4 people in the team (who are more senior than us 5) were all unaffected. The 5 of us (including me) had to fill in an application form to re-apply for our jobs, so the managers could decide which 1 of us they wanted to keep. With 5 of us fighting over 1 job, I knew I probably wouldn’t stand a very good chance, since some of the others had been there longer than me and therefore had more experience. The reason for the cuts was that our team is being merged into another, larger team.

I was in shock for the rest of the week after the initial announcement. I found it difficult to sleep, and I just couldn’t believe that the team would never be the same again. I knew that even if I was the 1 person selected to stay, I’d miss the other 4 people who would have to leave the team. I’d formed good relationships with the rest of the team, and I couldn’t believe we were going to be split up. I also knew that as I was unlikely to be the 1 person chosen to stay, I would have to look for jobs in other departments. I tried not to spend too much time worrying though, and I drew up an action plan to apply for other jobs. At that time, the only certainty was that things would never be the same again.

While I was waiting to hear whether I was to be the chosen person, I began applying for other jobs within the company. I was offered an interview for a Reporting Analyst job in another department, which is a position I knew I would enjoy. A day before the interview was due to be held, I was called into a meeting with my managers where I was told that I was not the person chosen to stay within the team. I wasn’t too surprised, and I was allowed to go home early that day. I spent the free time preparing for my Reporting Analyst interview, and I knew that I would have to try really hard in the interview otherwise I could end up being made redundant and becoming unemployed. I find interviews quite scary, so I was nervous.

Fortunately, the interview went really well. A couple of weeks later, I heard the news that I had been offered the Reporting Analyst job! So I was really happy and relieved, although of course I was sad that I would miss everyone in my old team. I started the new job this Monday, so I’ve been there a week now. It’s one level more senior than my old job and I like it so far. I actually think this job is better for me than the one I was made redundant from!

I was offered interviews for a couple of other internal jobs as well, but I cancelled them when I heard that I’d been offered the Reporting Analyst job.

On March 3rd, I had my holiday in Thailand with my aunt and uncle to see my Dad. So I had the interview a day before I left home, and by the time I got back I knew I’d been offered the job. My holiday was really good and as I was busy all the time I avoided worrying too much. I got to see my Dad’s house and also my baby sister Layla for the first time. You can see my holiday photos at my Flickr site. I arrived back home on 19th March, and I had one week of my old job before I moved to my new one. So it all worked out well, as there was no gap between my old job finishing and my new one starting.

A few days after the re-structure announcement, the 5 affected people had a meeting with our professional development manager. She is a very optimistic person, and in the meeting she said that she had been through a similar re-structure a couple of years ago. She explained that even though we were going through a very difficult time in our lives, in the future we would be able to look back at the situation and realise that it was necessary in order for us to grow as people. I think this is closely related to the theory that “bad things happen for a reason”. She said that we would probably end up in a better position than we were before the re-struture. For me, I think this has been true. My new job allows me to use my technical skills more fully, and it also means I have been able to move up a level, which was something I couldn’t do in the old job because there was a promotion-freeze. If my old job hadn’t been taken away from me, I probably wouldn’t have applied for this new job and I may never have known there was a better vocation for me.

I will still keep in contact with my old co-workers – I email them every few days to find out how they are getting on with looking for new jobs, and in the near future we will all have a final “farewell” meal together, although of course we will keep in touch afterwards. As I was the first of the affected people to find a new job, I had a meeting with one of the other women to give her advice about her upcoming interviews. As I’ve always found job interviews difficult, I never previously thought I would be able to coach other people, but I’m more used to the structure of interviews now. I gave her advice about how to structure her answers and what sort of things to talk about. In a few days’ time, I will find out whether she has been successful in her interviews.